Different communication protocols can exist in various control systems. For example, many industrial control systems communicate control information from a controller to a controlled device. These communications can be sent over various physical components such as fiber optic cables or electrical cables such as Ethernet, cable or other serial or parallel links.
In addition, the actual communications can be according to a given communication scheme. Many control systems have a customized communication scheme that is tuned for the particular type of information that is communicated. However, some control systems can require sending of very different types of information with different sizes, latencies and so forth such that a single communication protocol cannot be tuned to the multiple communication requirements.
In a different field, computer systems can have various buses and other communication interfaces to enable the various devices such as memories, disk drives, processors, peripheral devices and so forth to communicate with each other. Typically, computer systems use standard communication interfaces such as a PCI bus protocol to enable peripheral devices to communicate, and a SATA communication protocol to enable disk drives or other mass storage to communicate with devices. Yet multiple communication schemes do not typically extend to control systems. Examples of control system buses include a Controller Area Network (CAN), Profibus, Modbus, and Industrial Ethernet.